1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to methods and apparatus for aligning and spacing articles on a conveyor belt and more particularly to such methods and apparatus which accelerate each article to a higher rate of speed one after another thereby increasing the space between each article.
2. Description of the Related Art
Used plastic containers must be sorted by plastic type when they are recycled. There is a commercially available scanner which differentiates between the various plastic resins based on opacity, shape and color. Another commercially available scanner recognizes polyvinylchloride. Both of these scanners scan a single used plastic container at rates as high as 8000 to 10,000 containers per hour. For recycling of used plastic containers to be economical, the used containers must be fed to the scanners in single file at a high rate of speed with a minimum gap between each container. This feed process is referred to in the industry as singulation.
For a singulation system to be effective it must accurately align and space the used containers and must feed the aligned and spaced containers to the scanner at its maximum feed rate to optimize efficiency of the operation. If either the feed rate is low or the articles are aligned and spaced inaccurately, the overall efficiency of the recycling operation is not optimized.
It would be advantageous to provide a method and apparatus for aligning and spacing articles on a conveyer belt which operates at a high rate of speed and which accurately aligns and spaces the articles.